Five of fiction’s greatest hacker-heroes

James Swallow is an author and scriptwriter with over fifteen years of experience in fiction, television, radio, journalism, new media, and video games. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty-five novels with over 750,000 books currently in print in nine different worldwide territories. He was nominated by the BAFTA for his writing on the critically acclaimed Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Ghost is the latest novel in Swallow's Marc Dane thriller series.

At CrimeReads, the author tagged five fictional hackers who use their skills for good, including:

Henry Dorsett Case

Case is the wasted, down-at-heel anti-hero of William Gibson’s benchmark cyberpunk science fiction novel Neuromancer. A former “console cowboy” in a technologically enhanced future Japan, Case begins the novel as a drug-addicted burn-out, with his ability to cybernetically interface with the internet forcibly neutered as punishment for stealing from his employers. Offered the chance for a return to his old life, Case takes a job with a shady mercenary that unfolds into a series of escalating infiltrations, recruitments and attacks that take him across the world and eventually to a playground for the mega-rich in near Earth orbit—where a rogue artificial intelligence is planning to break its chains and seek freedom. Case’s story is a Chandler-esque adventure viewed through a Blade Runner lens, and Gibson’s novel captures a uniquely urban, uniquely 80’s view of the future that still retains a razor edge decades later.

Read about another entry on the list.

Neuromancer made Emily Temple's list of ten books that defined the 1980s, Jeff Somers's top ten list of books for non-geek parents of geeks, Soman Chainani's top five list of SFF novels with perfect opening lines, Abhimanyu Das and Gordon Jackson's list of eleven science fiction books regularly taught in college classes, Steve Toutonghi's list of six top books that expand our mental horizons, Ann Leckie's top ten list of science fiction books, Madeleine Monson-Rosen's list of 15 books that take place in science fiction and fantasy versions of the most fascinating places on Earth, Becky Ferreira's list of the six most memorable robots in literature, Joel Cunningham's top five list of books that predicted the internet, Sean Beaudoin's list of ten books that changed his life before he could drive, Chris Kluwe's list of six favorite books, Inglis-Arkell's list of ten of the best bars in science fiction, PopCrunch's list of the sixteen best dystopian books of all time and Annalee Newitz's lists of ten great American dystopias and thirteen books that will change the way you look at robots.

--Marshal Zeringue